Lars Aronsson wrote:
When I'm looking for a translation or explanation of a terms such as "Sub-Lieutenant" (a military rank), "jackdaw" (a bird) or "zucchini" (a vegetable), it makes a lot of sense to see them in contrast to what they are not, for example a list of other military degrees, or a group of similar but different birds or vegetables. But I think Wikipedia today is too much focused on describing each item on its own, and not enough on connecting or contrasting concepts to each other.
We do have "how to tell the difference between a bee and a wasp" and similarly for moths and butterflies. Lots of articles have notes on how the subject is different from similar subjects, and I'd be surprised if anyone objected to such additions. If they're scarce I'd say it's due to lack of energy.
I agree that there is a need for "visual disambiguators". [[Gallery of mountains]] is an experiment along those lines, and in the philatelic world the "stamp identifier" is an important reference work consisting of a collection of pictures of the types of stamps that don't carry any text - I was going to try making a WP-version of such a thing eventually, when there are more images.
At this point you should probably try making some experiments. Leave a note on the talk page about what you're doing (to fend off the deletionists :-) ), and if experiments seem encouraging, make a WikiProject and advertise it.
Stan